Duke University professor of geochemistry and water quality Avner Vengosh has been studying the environmental impacts of hydraulic fracturing for the last five years with a team of scientists.
They’ve published numerous papers on how the practice could affect the quality of groundwater and surface water, but had a hard time getting a grasp on how to actually identify hydraulic fracturing flowback fluid in the environment. After all, different fracking operators tend to use different fluid mixes and many of the chemicals that characterize the fluids are not available to the public.